The Broncos had 69 receptions from tight ends in 2019 and 40 of them came from rookie Noah Fant. Denver needs another TE to step up.
Getting back to our positional grades series, it’s now time to look back at the tight ends for the Denver Broncos for 2019.
Tight end, at least in terms of having one that can stretch the field and be an offensive threat, is something the Broncos had lacked for quite some time. That is largely why the team used its first-round pick on a tight end in 2019.
Let’s take a look at how each of the team’s tight ends graded out this past season.
Noah Fant
(Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports)
Stats
Receptions: 40
Receiving yards: 562
Touchdowns: 3
Fant got off to a slow start for the team and there were some fans already frustrated over the fact that the team traded out of the No. 10 spot where it could have drafted Devin Bush and into the No. 20 slot where Fant was selected.
Perhaps some still are.
But Fant turned it on toward the end of the season and ended up being second on the team in receptions and receiving yards. With the ball in his hands, he becomes a serious threat, quick and agile for a tight end. That is what the Broncos drafted him for.
Fant played in all 16 games and earned some great experience. The ceiling is high for him and he should be expected to be one of the team’s best offensive weapons for many years to come.
The Denver Broncos drafted a solid rookie class in 2019. How did each player grade out across the season?
After each school year, students are given letter grades to assess their accomplishments during the previous year. During every NFL offseason, grades are also commonplace.
Looking back at the Denver Broncos’ 2019 draft class, there is plenty of good that stands out, which means there is plenty to build on heading into the future.
Some of these players will be part of the foundation with which the Broncos look to rebuild on, looking to end a postseason drought that dates back to Super Bowl 50.
Here, we will review the 2019 season of each member of the team’s rookie class. This review will include statistics and the impact they made on the team. In addition to the team’s draft choices, Malik Reed, an undrafted rookie who made the 53-man roster, will also be graded.
There were other players that made the practice squad and then were called up to the active roster for various reasons, such as Josh Watson and Alijah Holder. Because their sample size is so small, they will not receive a grade for the season.
With all of that in mind, here we go.
1. Noah Fant, tight end
(Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports)
2019 stats
Receptions: 40
Receiving yards: 562
Touchdowns: 3
The Broncos originally held the No. 10 overall pick in the first round and many fans and analysts alike expected them to use the pick on Michigan linebacker Devin Bush. Instead, the team traded back to the No. 20 slot and chose Fant.
The Pittsburgh Steelers, who made the trade with Denver to come up to No. 10, did select Bush. Bush would have looked great in Denver and arguably better than Fant ever will, but Fant showed signs of being a future star.
His season got off to a slow start and concerns arose even in preseason among fans that the Broncos may have drafted a dud. He turned it on later in the season and finished second on the team in receptions and receiving yards, behind only Courtland Sutton.
In all, he did what was asked of him as a rookie and big things should be expected next season.
New Orleans Saints safety Marcus Williams has a bad rap among some vocal fans, but the experts at Pro Football Focus know he’s elite.
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New Orleans Saints free safety Marcus Williams has a bad rap among some fans. It’s because there’s this perception that he plays small in big moments — like his whiffed tackles on deep passes in last season’s loss to the San Francisco 49ers. There have been a handful of mistakes in critical moments from the 23-year-old starter, and a vocal contingent in Saints social media circles and fan forums are determined to zero in on those few bad plays against the 2,800-plus other snaps Williams has seen since the Saints drafted him.
To hear them tell it, Williams is an unreliable player who should be traded at the first opportunity. However, the analysts at Pro Football Focus are here to sweep that misconception away. Their snap-by-snap grading proved Williams isn’t just a good player; he’s one of the NFL’s best, ranking at No. 38 on their list of the top 101 players of 2019:
This season saw Marcus Williams return to the level of play that we saw from him as a rookie, and he ended the season with an overall PFF grade of 88.9. Williams was once again excellent in coverage and against the run, notching four interceptions and six pass breakups over the year. He also recorded 12 defensive stops, which is more than his previous two seasons in the league combined. He makes the PFF Top 101 for the first time in his career this season.
How’s that for busting a narrative? As the writeup suggests, Williams is a top-notch coverage safety around the league and has made improvements in run defense. It’s something that should have been expected, given the rare range Williams is gifted with as someone who can run from one sideline to the other with ease. What’s important is that Williams has successfully bounced back from a bad play that could have defined him: the Minneapolis Miracle, when he missed a last-second tackle to allow the game-winning score.
That’s how Williams’ 2017 rookie year ended. 2018 was supposed to have been the revenge tour, when he would develop into a game-changing weapon in the secondary. That didn’t happen, with the young safety visibly hesitating to bite on passes that he could have intercepted. It took a full season for Williams to put those bad vibes behind him, but now we can say with confidence that he’s arrived.
What happens next is unclear. Williams is headed for a contract year, and is one of the best and youngest players at his position. He’s tied Chicago Bears starter Eddie Jackson in interceptions (10) since 2017, and Jackson just set the market for safety contracts on a four-year, $58 million deal. Williams has rarely left the field for the Saints and has too often been the only defensive back making plays (his 10 career interceptions lead all Saints players from 2010 to 2019, by the way, and he’s only been in the league for three years).
He might be someone the Saints need to look at re-signing before his asking price rises even higher. Sure, he has some warts to his game — he must become a more consistent tackler, even if his missed tackle rate last year (14.5%) was near-average for his position. But the key takeaway here is that Williams is an ascendant talent, and his good plays outweigh his bad moments by a very, very wide margin. His game tape makes that obvious. Anyone telling you differently hasn’t put in the work to know.
New Orleans Saints tackle Terron Armstead earned well-deserved recognition on the Top 101 NFL Players of 2019 list from Pro Football Focus.
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New Orleans Saints left tackle Terron Armstead has finished too many seasons as one of the NFL’s best at what he does, but lacking the accolades his peers enjoy. He wasn’t named to the Pro Bowl until 2018 (returning in 2019), and has only cracked the AP All-Pro list once (in 2018, as a second-team entry). Sure, Armstead’s lengthy injury history has hurt his reputation, but there’s few left tackles around who combine his all-world athleticism with painstakingly-polished technique.
However, Armstead finally got his due from the list of the top 101 players of 2019 from Pro Football Focus. Players 101 through 76 have been revealed so far, and plenty of Armstead’s Saints teammates should join him. but for now, he’s the only member of the black and gold to make the cut:
76. T TERRON ARMSTEAD, NEW ORLEANS SAINTS
At his best, Terron Armstead is one of the best tackles in all of football, but an in-season injury affected his play and caused him to miss time. Even his absence showed how good he is, though, as Drew Brees completely changed his game when his reliable blindside protector wasn’t in the lineup by dramatically speeding up his release. Armstead surrendered just one sack all season, including the team’s lone playoff appearance, and the sack came in that game. In total, he allowed 24 pressures across more than 600 pass-blocking snaps and remains one of the best pass blockers in football.
While this was a drop from last year’s ranking (47), Armstead placed ahead of several tackles around the league, including Tennessee Titans bookends Jack Conklin (81) and Taylor Lewan (88), Indianapolis Colts right tackle Braden Smith (92), and Atlanta Falcons left tackle Jake Matthews (96). We’ll find out in the days ahead who the analysts at Pro Football Focus ranked ahead of Armstead, but it’s great to see him getting this well-deserved recognition. Now where will Ryan Ramczyk place?
There is no way to sugarcoat the following statement: Bears tight ends were historically bad in 2019. Let’s break them down, shall we?
There is no way to sugarcoat the following statement: The Chicago Bears tight ends were historically bad in 2019.
All three players who started the season with the team, finished on injured reserve (Trey Burton, Adam Shaheen, and Ben Braunecker), with two relatively unknown commodities left to pick up the pieces (J.P. Holtz and Jesper Horsted).
When a group of five tight ends combine for just 395 yards and two touchdowns for the season, you can expect some harsh grades. Here are the grades for the 2019 tight ends.
Trey Burton: F
Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports
After a strong start to the 2018 season, Burton trailed off and ultimately missed the Bears wildcard playoff game against the Eagles due to a sports hernia. The expectation heading into 2019 was that Burton would be 100 percent entering training camp, but ended up missing even more time due to other injuries and failed to string together any sort of momentum in the preseason.
Even when he was on the field when he was deemed “healthy,” Burton was invisible in nearly every game he played. When he was targeted, he struggled with drops and wasn’t willing to take the big hit in order to secure the catch on multiple occasions. Burton wound up catching 14 passes for 84 yards in eight games with no scores.
His health will be a major question mark heading into next season, but with two more years left on his deal and a significant amount of dead-cap attributed to his contract, Burton will likely begin the 2020 season on the Bears. It can’t get worse than 2019, right?
Pro Football Focus picked Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Breshad Perriman as a priority for the New Orleans Saints in 2020 free agency.
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No matter what Mickey Loomis says off the cuff in January, the New Orleans Saints must upgrade their wide receiver corps. Michael Thomas did the heavy lifting last season — catching an NFL-record 149 passes — but the team must surround him with some help. Starting wideout Ted Ginn Jr. is a pending free agent, as is slot specialist Austin Carr (who averaged more than 30 snaps per game when healthy, but was only targeted twice). They can’t afford to bet on sudden leaps from youngsters like Deonte Harris, Tre’Quan Smith, Keith Kirkwood, and Lil’Jordan Humphrey or Emmanuel Butler.
So the analysts at Pro Football Focus picked out one free agent the Saints should pursue: Tampa Bay Buccaneers wideout Breshad Perriman.
It seems like a given that Drew Brees will come back for one last hurrah, and the Saints will return the key members of the roster that ranked fourth in non-quarterback team WAR this past year. Still, Brees could use a low-cost weapon opposite of Michael Thomas. Breshad Perriman has been fairly decent since leaving Baltimore in 2017. He’s dropped just one of 90 targets these past two years, which bodes well for the most accurate quarterback in the NFL. In his most recent season with Tampa Bay, Perriman ended the year red hot by producing the second highest receiving grade over the last five weeks.
Perriman finally broke out in 2019, having spent the previous years shackled to Joe Flacco at quarterback in Baltimore or Hue Jackson running the offense in Cleveland. While his overall catch rate last year was just 52.2%, that’s a product of playing with Jameis Winston. When thrown a catchable ball, PFF credited him with rare success. The leap from Winston to whoever the Saints start at quarterback in 2020 (whether it’s Drew Brees, Teddy Bridgewater, or someone else) can’t be understated.
Interestingly, Perriman stepped up last season when called upon. He spent much of the year behind Pro Bowlers Mike Evans and Chris Godwin on the depth chart, but they were both on the mend late in December, promoting Perriman to top-receiver duties. He impressed as the focal point of the passing game, gaining 506 receiving yards in his final five games (and 349 yards in his last three). His 17.9 yards per catch would have led the entire Saints team last season.
With so many mouths to feed in Tampa Bay — Winston, Shaquil Barrett, and Ndamukong Suh headline this year’s free agent class, while Godwin is their top priority next offseason — some players aren’t going to stick around. And Perriman could be just what the Saints need.
As a team, the Denver Broncos only had 154 receptions from their wide receivers in 2019. Here’s a grade for each of the team’s receivers.
The wide receiver group is up next in our positional grades series for the 2019 season.
The Denver Broncos were not a strong passing team last year, ranking 28th in the league in passing yardage. That was mainly because the team lacked weapons that could stretch the field, but one of the team’s wide receivers still managed to make the AFC Pro Bowl roster.
Let’s see how the wide receivers graded out his year.
Courtland Sutton
(Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports)
Sutton was a major bright spot in his second year with the team, leading the Broncos with 72 receptions for 1,112 yards and six touchdowns. That helped him become a Pro Bowler, even if he wasn’t part of the original roster.
Sutton asserted himself as one of the league’s top young wideouts and going into next season, there should be plenty of excitement surrounding him. He seems to have all the tools to be the No. 1 wide receiver that Demaryius Thomas was for many years.
Sutton put up the best numbers he could have in this offense this year and there wasn’t much to complain about.
Grade: A
DaeSean Hamilton
(Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports)
As I touched on, the reason the Broncos were among the worst passing teams is the fact that there is a pretty steep dropoff from Sutton to the team’s No. 2 wide receiver who is . . . Hamilton — I guess?
The Broncos traded Emmanuel Sanders to the San Francisco 49ers ahead of the league’s trading deadline this season, hoping that a guy like Hamilton would step up and assume part of his role. Instead, the term “draft bust” began to creep up.
Hamilton only made 28 receptions on the season, which translates to less than two catches per game. Luckily, he finished the season strong by catching 11 passes for 130 yards and a touchdown in the team’s final two games, which at least gets his grade to a passing mark.
Hopefully, he can carry that momentum into next season and start to become an offensive force for this team.
The New Orleans Saints secondary was ranked 17th in the NFL for its performance in 2019, but major changes could be on the way in 2020.
The New Orleans Saints defense carried the offense through some tough times last season, and turned in a much stronger performance in the playoffs. Their pass rush logged one of its highest sacks totals (51) in years, largely thanks to tight coverage on the back end. Top cornerback Marshon Lattimore was selected for this year’s Pro Bowl.
However, the analysts at Pro Football Focus weren’t quite as impressed. In their eyes, the Saints secondary underperformed, and ranked 17th in the NFL:
Just three short years ago, defensive coordinator Dennis Allen inherited a coverage defense that had just finished the 2015 season with a 32nd-ranked team coverage grade of 29.8. But even though this year’s 17th-ranked 71.3 coverage grade is a vast improvement, there is still room to grow for New Orleans’ talented coverage unit. The Saints’ secondary consisted of seven players who were drafted in the first three rounds, but only two — Marcus Williams (89.5) and Janoris Jenkins (81.2) — earned a PFF coverage grade above 80.0. Former first-round picks Marshon Lattimore (68.7), Eli Apple (59.1) and Patrick Robinson (65.0) all performed below expectations, while Vonn Bell (51.9), P.J. Williams (47.8) and Chauncey Gardner-Johnson (68.7) are also expected to play a little better than their grades would suggest. They are a talented group, but they underachieved this past season.
This is one position group that should get shaken up in the offseason. Free agents include Apple, Bell, and P.J. Williams, while contract decisions must be made for expensive veterans like Jenkins and Robinson, as well as Lattimore and Marcus Williams, who will be due sizable extensions next year.
It’s easy to get hung up on the big plays Williams has allowed in critical moments throughout his career, ranging from missed tackles to untimely penalties. But those don’t outweigh his penchant for momentum-shifting plays in his own right — he was the only member of the Saints defense to intercept multiple passes last season, ranking among league leaders with four such takeaways.
The age of the group should also be considered. Williams and Lattimore are both just 23, and have been cornerstone players of the defense for three years now. Compare that to Gardner-Johnson, who is 22. This is a young core for the team to be built around, and it’s important that they be kept together.
The Denver Broncos ranked 20th in the league in rushing in 2019. How did the team’s running backs perform?
The Denver Broncos wanted to be a run-first offense in 2019, but the team ranked 20th in the league in rushing, averaging just under 104 yards per game on the ground as a team.
The Broncos used a two-headed running back system with Phillip Lindsay and Royce Freeman but the backfield was hampered when fullback Andy Janovich went down with a season-ending injury.
Trailing often in games and just not being able to run the ball they wanted to in a system ran by recently-fired offensive coordinator Rich Scangarello helped contribute to Denver being in the bottom half of the league’s rushing teams.
Here, we will grade each running back on the team based on their 2019 performance.
Still, Lindsay’s grade can’t come down because he wasn’t on the field. The coaching staff seemed insistent on a full split in the backfield and that is evident when you look at the snap counts.
Lindsay was on the field for 513 offensive snaps while 506 went to Freeman.
Lindsay was a little bit better as a rookie but had a solid follow-up season and while he may never be viewed as the kind of guy who can be a lead back due to his small stature, he’s one of the most important pieces on offense.
The Denver Broncos used three different quarterbacks in 2019. How did each quarterback do?
In looking back at the 2019 season, we will be handing out grades this offseason for each of the positional units of the Denver Broncos. We’ll jump right in with the position everyone thinks of first: quarterback.
Most teams in the league hope to start one quarterback all season and if not, the hope is that there is a capable backup sitting on the bench. In the case of the Broncos, the team used three different quarterbacks in 2019.
We will take a look at each of them individually, handing out a grade for each player and that will lead to a collective grade for the positional group.
During the offseason, the Broncos were looking to move on from Case Keenum, who had just posted a lackluster 2018 season. The answer to how they would do that came in March when the team traded for Flacco.
Ousted as the starting quarterback of the Baltimore Ravens by the fast-rising Lamar Jackson, Flacco, a Super-Bowl winning quarterback, needed a change of scenery. Denver seemed to be a logical place for him to renew his career, but if you instantly hated this move, you and I have something in common.
Flacco’s best days are behind him, regardless of what John Elway may think, but the reason he was so bad for the Broncos was that he is just not a good fit for the offense Rich Scangarello wanted to install.
The offense sputtered with Flacco at the helm and that was evident even in the preseason. But if you want an idea of just how bad he was, go back and watch the Week 7 game against the Kansas City Chiefs.
Allen started three games for the Broncos and that was probably too many. For some reason, the team was hesitant to go with its second-round pick, Drew Lock.
Instead, Allen, a former sixth-round pick playing for his third different team came in and won a game against the Cleveland Browns and suddenly, fans were talking about how he could be the starter going forward and into the future.
Really?
That’s just how hungry Broncos Country is for a quarterback it can believe in, but Allen is a competent backup quarterback at absolute best.
He did the best he could given the circumstances but the fact that he was the starter for three games was a poor decision by the coaching staff. That’s not on Allen, but if he was a better quarterback when he played, it might not have been a poor decision.
